KNICKS GET SPIKED!
Lee the lucky one as boycotting star misses ugly loss, more Garden drama
Spike Lee didn’t miss anything new or exciting Wednesday night. The Knicks simply lost again and a few fans pleaded for James Dolan to sell the team.
With Lee announcing his boycott a night earlier, the Garden hosted a much better squad, the Jazz, that pounded the Knicks, 112-104, behind 23 points apiece from Donovan Mitchell and Bojan Bogdanovic.
“We tried, I feel like we played extremely hard,” Knicks forward Julius Randle said. “They’re just a really good team.”
Lee said he’s refraining from attending games the rest of the season but his absence Wednesday wouldn’t have been noteworthy otherwise. Without much buzz this season, the famed filmmaker had only been to about three games (that we can remember — against Dallas, the Lakers and Rockets). As usual, his courtside seat was occupied by somebody else.
It wasn’t just Lee who no-showed Wednesday night. The Garden was uncharacteristically scattered with sections of empty seats and the announced attendance of 16,588 was well short of a sellout. One theory was that the coronavirus kept people at home, although the Jazz is a tough draw and the Knicks are expected to have a sellout Friday against the Thunder. Another theory, although also flawed, is that Knicks fans are fed up with a franchise that has produced just three winning seasons since 2001.
On the court, the second game of the Leon Rose era didn’t go so well. The Knicks (19-42) trailed for the entire game, allowing the Jazz to dominate and lead by 20 in the fourth quarter. The Knicks were clearly missing backup center Mitchell Robinson, who was inactive because of a sore groin. Utah center Rudy Gobert punished the Knicks in the paint.
“We got hurt on some rebound baskets. We gave up the rim a few times,” interim coach Mike Miller said. “Had some plays we needed to make offensively. We got some pretty good looks during that time and didn’t make enough to hold onto the run. That was the biggest thing. You get to the other end and give up a couple of baskets, then get to our end and we’re not and it starts stretching out a little bit.”
The defeat, occurring with Dolan in his usual courtside seat and Rose on executive row, followed Monday’s impressive win at the Garden over the Rockets. That was overshadowed by Lee, the franchise’s most prominent fan, getting into an argument with security over which arena entrance he could use.
The Knicks issued a statement saying, among other things, that Dolan walked up to Lee at halftime and resolved the issue. Lee took exception to that characterization and took a media circuit.
“This is Garden spin,” Lee said on ESPN’s First Take, adding later, “I’m being harassed by Dolan. I don’t know why.”
MSG responded with a biting statement and the war was on.
The Lee incident, if nothing else, underscored the disconnect between the fanbase and team owner. In late January, the Garden crowd chanted loudly, “Sell the Team,” prompting Dolan to fire team president Steve Mills and hire Leon Rose as team president. Lee just became the latest spokesman against Dolan.
“(Lee)’s a guy that I grew up watching, grew up being able to see him pretty far down (on the court),” said Donovan Mitchell, the Jazz All-Star who grew up in Connecticut as a Knicks fan. “Just to see all that with him. I don’t know what exactly happened but just to see all that it’s pretty crazy.”
LAVAR LIKES THE KNICKS
The last time LaVar Ball lobbied for an organization he spoke “Lonzo Ball to the Lakers” into existence.
Now the bombastic papa is publicly declaring that his youngest son — LaMelo Ball — should be drafted by the Knicks.
“The best fit, in my eyes, is New York,” Lavar said Wednesday on FS1’s Uninterrupted. “The New York Knicks because I know (Carmelo Anthony). Melo is a big-city guy. He likes that. He’d love it. So everybody’s talking about the city type of thing. Cleveland, he already lived in Cleveland. He don’t like that cold weather like that — especially if you’re not going to be inside with a lot of bright lights.
LaMelo, 18, is considered a top-5 prospect in the 2020 draft after playing last season professionally in Australia. The 6-8 point guard, who withdrew his commitment to UCLA, has been in the spotlight since middle school.